Why (and How) SMBs Should Strategically Adopt Technology

There is no question that a small business can benefit from technology, as has been proven time and time again. However, an issue can arise if a business bites off more than it can chew, so to speak, and ultimately creates a spike in costs. A responsible business owner will resist this temptation and prioritize the solutions they need over the ones they want - building profitability and generating capital needed to make other improvements.

In this blog, we’ll examine some of the implementations that can deliver a good return on investment to a small business.

Managed IT Services For the small or medium-sized business seeking maximum value for their dollar, managed IT is a great choice. For a predictable, scaled monthly fee, a managed service provider (also known as an MSP) will make sure that a company’s information technology solutions are functional before a problem or issue arises. What’s more, a relationship with an MSP can also provide invaluable access to specialized vendors, enabling you to leverage some of the best solutions available.

As alluded to above, one of the biggest values that an MSP provides is in the hands-on experience that its technicians have, both on-site and remotely. A company whose solutions aren’t in working order is a company that is hemorrhaging money via downtime, and so it is crucial that a company in this situation has the means to resolve and ideally avoid downtime, continuing its productivity and revenue generation.

One of the biggest benefits to investing in managed IT services is the speed at which you will see a return on that investment. Comparing the cost of an MSP’s services to the multitude of costs that these services help you avoid will help to illustrate how much an MSP can help you. How much are you spending on break/fix services, hiring and onboarding an in-house technician, updating and upgrading your hardware and software, and weathering downtime? All of these costs can be consolidated and/or eliminated with an agreement with an MSP.

Hybrid Cloud The cloud is growing at an explosive pace, and for the business or organization with specific needs where accessibility and security are concerned, a hybrid cloud platform may be the best strategy to leverage this industry-shaking technology. Private clouds, while secure, are costly to implement and maintain. Public clouds are more affordable, but there are some major concerns among businesses at the thought of blindly entrusting crucial data to another organization. While the security of such methods is improving, there is an understandable need for control among many business owners that disqualifies the public cloud as a viable option.

The hybrid cloud is the integration of these two halves, joined together to eliminate the downsides while preserving the advantages. This also provides control over a business’ data and applications while allowing the scalability to leverage it as needed. Arguably best of all, the hybrid cloud can add the productivity that your business needs to increase revenue and profits. These reasons are large contributors to why the hybrid cloud is swiftly being considered an inevitability for all businesses by many industry experts.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Nowadays, just about every business has a wireless network. This has led, in conjunction with every employee coming to work with a smartphone in their pocket, to a need to manage the devices that connect to that network. Allowing employees to utilize their personal devices for work purposes brings great benefits but requires a solution to help eliminate the risks and threats that these devices bring in from the outside. There is also no shortage of incidents where inappropriate and shortsighted mobile behaviors on a wireless network have brought issues to a business. This is why you need to take the necessary steps to protect your network through the enforcement of BYOD policies.

A BYOD policy needs to take many things into account to be seen as having a worthwhile value to the organization, from how many devices are being brought into the company to the cost of the mobile device management software to the affect that introducing these devices into the workflow has on productivity and collaboration.

Of course, you should also keep in mind that some employees and most of the visitors you receive to the office will see no problem in using your business network to access things that aren’t conducive to your business operations, eating up resources that should be used for other things. This is why any BYOD implementation also needs to see to including access control and permissions within its mobile device management policies. This will provide you with benefits from heightened efficiency to enhanced security, leading to a potential boost in revenue generation - all the while enjoying the diminished costs that leveraging BYOD provides to your business’ budget.

It’s true that adding new technology solutions to your business can carry a hefty expense with it, but the right solutions can offset that cost with improved company operations and diminished security risks. The professionals at BlackCSI have the experience and know-how with IT solutions to ensure that the right solutions are the ones that go into your business, in the right way. For more information about some of the things we can help you to improve in your organization’s IT, give us a call at (717) 620-3042.

About the author

Ruthann Black, President, Chief Executive Officer and founder of BlackCSI has over 25 years of experience in Training, Professional Business Development and IT Systems Integration. Prior to starting BlackCSI, she served as a Solutions Development Manager and Project Manager for IBM Corporation for 12 years.

There is no question that a small business can benefit from technology, as has been proven time and time again. However, an issue can arise if a business bites off more than it can chew, so to speak, and ultimately creates a spike in costs....